Obama backs efforts to end 'conversion therapy'

Responding to a petition on the White House website calling for a ban on conversion therapy, Obama writes that "tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let's say a young man, will struggle to fall to sleep, wrestling alone with a secret he's held as long as he can remember. Soon, perhaps, he will decide it's time to let that secret out."

Obama adds: "What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends and his teachers and his community. But it also depends on us — on the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build."